by Judith Tarr
So many things in this one small room, and some that she might not even have recognized, intricate and strange. Riches: a copper pot, a carved wooden box, a great heap of painted bowls. And, more than anything else, the larder full and it was barely summer, a wealth of things to eat.
These people never went hungry, even in the dead of winter. Such was a tribesman’s dream, to live in a land so rich that he could eat well the year round, nor suffer unduly in the achieving of it.
Danu brushed her cheek lightly with his finger. She shivered at the touch, and caught herself in the beginning of a smile.
He warmed her with his own. “We’ll not send you away,” he said. “That I can promise you.”
“You can?” she asked.
He nodded. “The Mother said. You’ll be guest and friend here for as long as it pleases you.”
“Even when the war comes?”
“We’ll need you most of all then,” he said.
“I hope you remember that,” she said, “when you see what war is. Words can’t describe it. You have to see.”
“I won’t forget,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Sarama.
III: SHEPHERD OF MEN
53
Agni broke camp within a handful of days after he was cast out of the tribe, as soon as he could ride and not fall dizzy from Mitani’s back. The gods favored him with a run of warmth, a false breath of spring. There was more and deeper winter on the far side of it, but bright sun and soft breezes sped him on his way.
He rode due west, as Sarama had done before him. His journey in truth was shorter than hers; the high tor stood at the western edge of the hunting grounds, looking out toward the sunset.
Sarama must have ridden as a hunter rides, because none of the tribes camped along the way had seen or heard of her. Agni made no secret of his coming. He could hardly have done so, with twoscore and a handful of men, a great herd of horses, a herd of cattle, and Taditi riding demurely veiled on the back of an ox. They were a tribe, and they traveled as such.
A tribe on another tribe’s lands was, in most instances, a call to war. But Agni rode under the sign of the gods’ messenger: the horns and the tail of a white bull. He had sacrificed it on the night before their departure from the high tor, with his own hands had led the beast up the steep hill and onto the summit, and there slit its throat. The blood had sprung red and steaming on melting snow and bare brown earth, and all the omens had been good.
Under the bull’s horns and its tasseled tail, Agni could ride openly through the lands of every tribe. He could enter its camp, walk unmolested where a stranger would far more likely be killed, face its chieftain or its king and deliver the message that the gods had given him while he slept atop the tor, with the bull’s hide wrapped about him. Skyfather’s emissary had come to him in his dream, the raven of battle with its glossy black feathers.
“We give you the sunset,” it had said to him. “Go now and take it, and hold it in Our name.”
Agni told the tale of that dream, and conveyed the message that went with it. “The sunset countries are ours for the taking. Come, ride with me. Ride and conquer.”
The chieftains nodded wisely, and the elders murmured in wonder, and the tribe did not break camp in the morning when Agni left it. But beyond the camp and the herds, just out of sight of the tents, inevitably Agni would find a company waiting for him. The young men, the wild of heart, the bored and the headstrong and the men without wives or inheritance to bind them to the tribe, were ready and eager to follow a man whom the gods had sent to them.
He made no secret of his coming, or of his exile, either. “Best they know what they’re following,” he said to Patir as they rode away from the camp of a clan that called itself the White Bear. “I’ll not lie or hide. I’m doing as the gods bid me.”
Patir nodded a little abstractedly. “We’d better hope the newcomers start thinking about feeding themselves. There’s nigh a hundred of them now, and a wide stretch of steppe ahead of us.”
“I’ll see that they think of it,” Rahim said, and Taditi nodded.
Agni was left with nothing to say, and no promise to make. It was all done for him. Time was when he would have been angry, but at the moment, as he thought on what he was and what he was doing, all that came to him was laughter.
The others did not try to understand. Agni supposed he had been saying and doing strange things since he woke by the high tor and found himself both exile and chieftain.
He had felt strange. His world had shattered, and these were the shards: an army of dreamers, a red stallion with a crescent moon on his brow, and the sun riding low ahead of him, beckoning him onward.
With a hundred men at his back, he was stronger than many kings. But he would not let them call him by that name.
“I’ll earn it,” he said. “I’ve sworn as much. But I’m not a king yet.”
They called him by the name that his father had given him, therefore, the simple name, without title or mark of respect. And that became a mark of respect in its own right.
None of the people Agni met knew anything of Sarama, until he came to the camp of the Stormwolves. They were a strong tribe in their part of the steppe, under a chieftain hardly older than Agni. His name was Gauan. He of all the chieftains and kings heard Agni out as eagerly as one of the young rakehells on the fringes, leaning forward, nodding at this observation or that, rapt in the tale that Agni told.
When Agni was done Gauan said, “I’ve seen a face like yours before.”
Agni leaned forward himself. “What? My face? On a woman, by any chance?”
Gauan’s delight was palpable. “Why, yes! So you’re the brother she never quite failed to admit to.”
“Why would she—” Agni did not finish that. Instead he asked, “Was she well? Had she traveled safely?”
“Perfectly so,” Gauan said, “from everything that I could tell. We gave her escort as far as we could. I would have followed her to the ends of the world, but I was going to my wedding.”
“Would you follow her now?” asked Agni.
Gauan rubbed his chin under the thick ruddy beard. Of course he hesitated. He was the lord of a tribe. Women and children looked to him for protection. The riches of his people, its herds, its sons, its stores of weapons, were his to guard. He could not simply take horse and ride in pursuit of a dream.
And yet he said, “My wedding is long over, and my wife is suitably with child. Yes, I would follow Horse Goddess’ servant. I should like to see that she came safe into the sunset country.”
“I, too,” said Agni, as much prayer as answer.
In the morning the warband of the Stormwolves rode with Agni’s gathering, leaving the women and children behind, and a reluctant company of men to defend them. Then Agni knew that this was real; that it was no dream or delusion. Truly, as he lived and breathed, he was leading an army that meant to conquer the west.
If the west did not conquer his army. Past the borders of Gauan’s country for the first time he saw the shadow that was the great wood.
The tribes within sight of it were restless, stirring already before he ever reached them. They had had their own dreams, their own summonings. Their fear of the wood was deep, their tales of it harrowing, yet they had mustered their courage before the faces of their gods. They had made their own gathering, massed their own army.
Agni came to it warily, stepping softly. A false word, an ill-conceived action, could strike a spark that flared into war.
He had tribes in his army who had been bitter enemies before they made common cause with the march to the west. These new tribes, none of whom he had ever known before, were as uncertain in their temper as bears in the spring. It well might please them better to slake their thirst for blood with the slaughter of strangers from the east, than to face the wood that they had feared all their lives long.
He took great care to ride into that camp with his weapons secured out of reach. His people were watching him closely,
the archers with bows ready to hand, but these strangers would not see that. They would see a man riding all but alone, unarmed, with nothing to mark him a king.
He had argued that even with Taditi, insisted that he put on no airs, assume no dignity beyond what any man could claim. It should be enough that he had an army at his back.
He would never confess to her how tight his throat was as he rode into the camp, or how taut the muscles were across his shoulders. An arrow or a thrown spear could have cut him down in an instant.
So many faces. So many strangers. They had made no pretense of excitement, nor did any of them quicken his pace to see the easterners ride in. And yet they all were there, opening a passage for him. He could not turn aside from the straight path, must ride direct to the camp’s center.
Since that had been his intention, he made no effort to contest it. He smiled at those whose eyes met his—not many; they were all staring, but not into his face. He put on every appearance of ease, as if he came to a camp of friends.
The elders and the leaders waited for him in the center. They were not all young, though even the eldest looked to be still of fighting age. These were warleaders, commanders of armies. From the weathering of their faces and the count of their scars, they had seen more wars and raids than Agni had ever dreamed of.
Such men among the eastern tribes had told him that he was a fool; that he had no hope of piercing the wood, let alone of conquering a country that only one man of the tribes had ever seen. If that one was lying or had stretched the truth, Agni and his army might find themselves standing at the edge of a precipice, or worse, facing a tribe to which war was breath and life. War was glory, but people in the east were rather fond of peace. After all, it let them enjoy the fruits of war.
In front of these dour men with their hard faces and stony eyes, he slid from Mitani’s back. The stallion stood where Agni left him, patient, as he had been taught. Agni walked forward a step, two, three. He could feel his own men behind him, but hemmed in by greater numbers than their own. If it came to a fight, it would not go well for them.
He turned his mind away from that. He stood here because he had been guided to this place; because every night in dreams, the gods urged him onward. Surely these people believed in dreams. How else could the gods speak to them?
He halted just out of their reach and let his eyes pass over each face. Every tribe had its own features by which one might know its people, but they were all of much the same stamp: narrow, high-cheeked, hawk-nosed. They were fair or red or brown for the most part; blue-eyed or grey or green or, rarely, pale brown or amber like Agni’s own. Few were dark, and those few were known to have foreign blood.
There were a number of dark faces here, men not as tall as some but broad and strong, and their faces were heavy, as if carved out of stone. Their hair was black, their eyes dark. Perhaps because they were so dark, they seemed to regard Agni with more mistrust than most.
He considered putting on a grim face, but that would be too much like the rest. He relaxed therefore, smiled, said easily as a man might among friends, “A fair day and a warm welcome to you, men of the west.”
Some of them blinked. Others seemed taken aback. The greeting should have been theirs to utter, but they had sat silent, saying nothing.
Maybe Agni’s presence had driven words out of their heads. He turned in his place, looking about at a camp that spread as wide as a gathering of tribes. “I see,” he said, “that the gods have spoken to you, too. Are you ready? Will you go into the west?”
One of the grimmest of them all, a black-browed man with a great scar that rent his face in two, said in a voice like stone grinding on stone, “Are you all so light-minded, you in the east?”
Agni laughed. “Are you all so dour, you in the west? Is it the wood that does it to you? Come, be glad. Skyfather is calling you. He lays his blessing on you.”
“Earth Mother is not greatly pleased,” the grim one said.
“She should be,” said Agni, “if the gods call us to war. Blood is meat and drink to her. It makes her rich; it nourishes the green and growing things.”
“Yes,” said the grim warleader. “The grass is never so green as on an old battlefield.” He looked Agni over, a black look under black brows. “You’re but a boy. How much blood have you shed in battle?”
“Enough,” said Agni with his own flash of darkness. “If I say I hope we can win the sunset countries with little bloodshed, will you still ride with me?”
“Do you fancy that you’ll lead us?”
Agni met that level stare. “I know that the gods set me in front of the rest. If their blessing holds, I’ll be a king in the sunset country. But I’m not a king yet. Nor do I ask to be. I only ask that you ride with me.”
“Even to death, or the world’s ending?”
“Wherever the gods decree.”
The warleader nodded, grim as ever, but a spark had brightened his eye. “I’ll do it. I don’t speak for the rest, but I’m willing.”
The others glanced at one another. It was all agreed, Agni knew that. They were only feigning this last debate, to keep the stranger off balance.
He could not tell whether they would go as the dark-browed warleader had said he would go. Many looked as if they would refuse.
Yet, after what no doubt they reckoned a judicious pause, they nodded, one after another.
“We’ll go,” one said, a man as fair as the other was dark, so fair that though he was a man of middle years he had hardly more beard than a boy. He stroked what there was of it, nodding, frowning at Agni. “Yes, we’ll brave the dark places. But not in your name. You we don’t know.”
“You know Skyfather,” Agni said, “and the Thunderer, and the lords of the storm. I ride in their names. And you?”
“For Skyfather and for the burning god and for the lords of blood and battle,” the fair man said, “we ride together.”
“That will do,” said the dark man.
It would more than do. But Agni could not in wisdom let them see how relieved he was. He smiled, nodded, did his best to look as if he had never expected any other choice.
54
The armies of west and east settled together in camp, if briefly, for time was passing. Agni as the leader of the eastern tribes was admitted among the warleaders, but they made it clear that if he would be more than they, he must earn it.
He was not inclined to argue that. These were seasoned men, men of power and substance, rich in cattle and horses. He beside them was a ragtag boy with a pack of restless young wolves. But if they could make common cause, then that was all that was needed. The gods led them. Nothing else need matter.
Taditi did not happen to agree. These men had brought women with them, a few only, favorite wives or bold-spirited concubines to keep them warm of nights. She went among the tents—prowling, Agni would not quite call it—and came back with a face as grim as the dark warleader’s, and even less forgiving of youthful follies. “You are too humble,” she said.
Agni mimed vast astonishment. “Why, aunt! I’ve never been accused of humility before.”
“You’ve been accused of idiocy more than once,” she said. “It never hurt you badly, but you never led an army before, either. They’re saying in the tents that the men are laughing together at the eastern boy, and telling one another that you’ll be an easy one to command. You’re no one to reckon with, they say, you with your callow boys and your meek manner.”
“You’re trying to provoke me,” Agni said.
“If the truth provokes you,” said Taditi, “then I’m not the one to regret it.”
Agni propped himself on his elbow in the heaped furs of his bed. He would not gratify her with a flash of temper.
“‘Callow’? They said that?”
“And meek,” she said, “and no threat to any man. The women reckon you pleasant to look at. You might even make a man if you lift your head a little and look their husbands in the eye.”
That
stung. It must have shown on his face: Taditi’s laughter was like a lash of cold rain.
“I’m the youngest of them by a hand of years,” he said. “I’ve never led more than a double handful in war. Should I declare myself king, and give them honest cause to laugh at me?”
“Carry yourself like a king,” she said, “and the rest will follow.”
The taste of bitterness filled his mouth. “What, as I carried myself when they cast me out of the tribe?”
“Stop that,” she said, sharp as a slap. “You were conspired against. And you will be again, unless you act against it. You owe respect to your elders, but those elders owe you respect as the gods’ own. They’ve no leader here, no one man who hears them out and then decides for them all. They’ll quarrel and scatter before they come through the wood.”
“They have a leader,” Agni said. “The dark man, the one I spoke to—”
“He speaks for them more often than not,” she said, “but his tribe is small and his strength limited. There’s also some doubt as to his loyalty. Do you mark how different he looks? He’s kin to the forest people. He speaks their language and can command them to a degree, but if it comes to a choice between the tribes and the forest people, no one knows which he’ll choose.”
“Well then,” Agni said. “The fair one, the one everyone’s eyes seemed to rest on. Surely he can command them when he’s so minded.”
“Not he nor any other of the western tribesmen,” Taditi said. “Why do you think the gods sent you? They need someone from outside, one of them but set apart, with the strength of will to hold them together, and a little magic, too.”
Agni snorted. “Will I may have. I’ve been called stubborn often enough. But there’s no magic in me.”
“You don’t need feathers and chants and a bone flute to bring men to your call. You did it among the White Horse people and in most of the tribes to the west of it. Now do it here.”
“But I don’t know what I did.”
